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"Europeans Debate Castration of Sex Offenders"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this article is the title of this interesting piece in today's New York Times.  The piece is a must-read for anyone focused on sex offender law and policy, in part because of one startling piece of (old) data noted in the article.  Here are some excerpts (with a few paragraphs re-ordered): Whether castration can help rehabilitate violent sex offenders has come under new scrutiny after the Council of Europe?s anti-torture committee last month called surgical castration ?invasive, irreversible and mutilating? and demanded that the Czech Republic stop offering the procedure to violent sex offenders. Other critics said that castration threatened to lead society down a dangerous road toward eugenics. The Czech Republic has allowed at least 94 prisoners over the past decade to be surgically castrated...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on March 11, 2009 (boomark / email).